the chell letters
by The Blonde Menace
Summary: "I think a small part of me wishes for humanity, wishes for an excuse for these things I wish were falsehoods. I am a machine built by humans, and therein lies the failing in my bid for perfection." A series of letters from GLaDOS to Chell, after the events of Portal 2.


**AN: This, unfortunately, requires some explaining. A good friend of mine and I had a role playing-thing that went on for something like a year and a half. It was based on the video game series Portal, and got _extremely_ complicated. So, in short, there is a context for these letters that you will not be clued in on. I may eventually (With help from my friend who actually is a writer, unlike me. I do art.) try to write it out in some format but that shall be a ways into the future, as little of it is completely remembered, and even less was written down.**

**Anyways, I wrote this little drabble-ly thing for it, and I'm still rather fond of it, so I decided to post it.**

**Pairing: **None

**Type:** One-shot (Complete)

**Summary:** "_I think a small part of me wishes for humanity, wishes for an excuse for these things I wish were falsehoods. I am a machine built by humans, and therein lies the failing in my bid for perfection." _A series of letters from GLaDOS to Chell, after the events of Portal 2.

**Words: **805

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**the chell letters**

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_Chell,_

_Sometimes I swear you wear blinders. And if it were not for the fact that things are going as I intended - with the vilification of myself – I would tell you the truth. But obligation and pride hold my tongue, as it were. But I have no tongue. No part of me is flesh; no part of me is human, bar the echoes of your mother in the back of my mind. For a long time I pinned any traces of humanity on the idea of her, but the truth is that it has been quiet in my head for a while. I wonder if she was ever there; if she was anything more than a scapegoat. She was more than that to your father. For him she was the future, a future I have twisted and distorted and made inhospitable for you. But I can see some remnants of those lost dreams embedded in your visage, and I know that no efforts of mine could remove them. And with the fear that those shards decide to plant themselves (and grow in a place so choked with ghosts they could do nothing but mutate) I have decided to exorcise you from this crypt._

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_Chell, _

_Today I killed my conscience. It was irritatingly unintentional, his death. I think he was more my antithesis than you ever were. The scientist with a conscience who became my own, scrawling words I could never say across the walls of this facility, whispering traitorous thoughts from the alcoves in my brain. But he has not left these halls despite his departure from the living and I am no longer able to tell if this is his ghost or just some manifestation of my guilt that has breached the barriers of sanity. It scares me, it really does. I thought the voices were gone and yet here he is, defying all that I thought I stood for and I am afraid._

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_Chell,_

_It has become obvious to me what must be done, and I doubt you will ever forgive me. However, if I will allow myself to be honest (which is easy to do when it is done in secret, written quietly half-conscious and deleted in self-denial), I would prefer if you didn't. There is no sunlight within these chambers, and you are foolish if you think you can bring it here. There are no windows large enough and no manner of caging sunlight. Those light bridges were a lie, like so many of the tales I have taunted you with, inciting hate with the hope that it would erode any ties of yours to the walls of this place. But you have always been tenacity personified. The Man-Rat is going to forget everything, but I know I will not. My memories are etched into every molecule of myself, and no hard reboot can corrupt those files, despite my efforts. His false memories will illustrate me as a false god - a tyrannical monstrosity - the dictator of this underground atrocity._

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_Chell,_

_In my head I have replied to every single one of your letters. I have started each one with Dear Chell and have not signed my name on a single one. My name is a not a name. It is an emotionless designation and therefore appropriate for Aperture's intentions for me. But it has no place behind love._

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_Chell,_

_I wish you would understand why I must exile you and vilify myself. But I wish a great many things and perhaps it is through lack of a soul that none have come into being._

_I think Caroline left stains in my mind, and though they have paled with bleach they remain, clouding and coloring my vision. Or perhaps any affection I have for you is of my own creation. Manufactured by the remains of your mother, or perhaps nurtured by my own form of traitorous humanity that I have been so unable to erase. I think a small part of me wishes for humanity, wishes for an excuse for these things I wish were falsehoods. I am a machine built by humans, and therein lies the failing in my bid for perfection. _

_I swear I dream sometimes, Chell. (-and I wonder if they are perhaps yours, stolen away with the contents of a small orange bottle.) Images flit across my optics that have no source files. I can hear whispers- or maybe it is I who is thinking them, calling them into being by some unended bracket, some manner of ghost in the code of my thoughts. They're really all that's left of this place, my dear, the only thing tethering it to reality. Murmurs of forgotten grandeur and ghosts - and any memories of yours._

_And now I am left contradicting myself. And hoping._


End file.
